ALEC Goes Public With Opposition to Mandatory Minimums

The American Legislative Exchange Council, which has been responsible for pushing some of the most appalling legislation in the country, is at least getting it right when it comes to mandatory minimum sentences. After quietly supporting reform behind the scenes (which is how the group nearly always operates), the group’s Cara Sullivan has gone public with an op-ed in the Moonie Times:

Policymakers are correct to be concerned about the status of America’s criminal justice system. At the federal level, there has been a 700 percent increase in the number of federal prisoners over the past 30 years, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons is operating at levels nearly 40 percent over capacity. However, as federal incarceration rates climb, state rates have been declining as many states examine evidence-based and data-driven reforms to their criminal justice systems. States are leading the way in criminal justice reform, and the federal government should take notice.

Both levels of government can protect our communities through crafting policies that focus limited resources on dangerous criminals by allowing judges to depart from mandatory-minimum sentences in certain cases of nonviolent offenders. These policies not only strengthen public safety and help balance budgets, but they also help rebuild lives…

Policymakers need to consider alternatives to the inefficient and often unjust status quo of sentencing nonviolent offenders to lengthy and expensive prison stays that do little to protect public safety. Although they differ in approach, these safety valves provide judges with discretion to depart from automatic, pre-established prison sentences for specific offenses — if the court finds the imposition of the mandatory-minimum sentence to be unnecessary or to be a miscarriage of justice. When applied to certain crimes, safety-valve legislation protects public safety by responsibly focusing resources on dangerous offenders who pose a real and clear threat to the community.

Additionally, safety-valve policies are fiscally responsible reforms. Allocating resources for the most serious offenders ensures the criminal justice system is providing the most public safety return per taxpayer dollar. A Washington state analysis found that while incarcerating violent offenders leads to a net public benefit by saving the state more than it costs, imprisoning certain low-level, nonviolent offenders leads to negative returns.

That doesn’t go nearly far enough for me, but it’s a start. And I’m very pleased to see the bipartisan support starting to grow for real criminal justice reform. The real solution to our mass incarceration problem is to legalize drugs, but that’s a pipe dream at this point.

Now maybe ALEC can come out to repeal Three Strikes laws, which shouldn’t be too hard, as it wrote them.

howardhershey

With mandatory minimums what do you want to bet there will quickly be an even greater disparity in the incarceration of people of color for drug offenses relative to drug use? Unintended consequences.

freehand

1. Legalize recreational drugs and license their production. Tax ’em.

2. Immediately take possession of private prisons via eminent domain. Cancel or finish all contracts ASAP. Make reasonable investigations into whether or not actual corruption has occurred.

3. Surely with modern tech we can monitor non-violent felons without incarcerating them?

4. Create / fund state-level fact-based commissions to look at school zero tolerance policies. How many kids who are dangerous are being ignored, while non-dangerous and creative kids are thrown out of the mainstream? Rescue salvageable kids when possible.

5. Use fact-based data and clear goals to look at laws that have been passed to protect kids from sexual predators. We have cases where young girls have been busted for distributing child pornography because they sent naughty pictures to their boyfriends! And use a reasonable age-difference consideration for age of consent cases.

6. When all concerned are consenting adults, there should be no crimes. I can give money to a street beggar, and can have sex with a stranger, but if I give her money for sex, we’re both busted? (And she goes to jail.) Not to mention gambling…

7. Universal health care, single payer. Health care costs interfere with so many lives, it’s hard to believe that saving money with universal health care won’t help in nearly all aspects of society.

8. Full-time workers should be able to live on their earnings. Reasonable minimum wage.